User Reviews

Overall Rating:

Value Rating:

Submitted by
Johnny RC
a All Mountain Rider

Date Reviewed: January 8, 2013

Strengths: Smooth Shifts, quiet, tough.

Weaknesses: Serviceablility

Bottom Line:

I bought the X9 because I didn't care about Carbon, in fact, I ride so many rock gardens, I was weary of the XO because of all the reports of snapping. A little extra weight for a metal cage was fine by me for durability. HOWEVER, they don't tell you that the parts for X9 and below are specific to SRAM. After half a summer, the upper pulley split, and it's plastic. Lame, ok, I'll upgrade to ceramic pulleys right? Nope, the X9 and below pulleys have strange bearing holes, and you can't use aftermarket. SO, not sure what I'm gonna do. I have a whole SRAM drivetrain or I'd go back to Shimano rear. Otherwise it's great, shifts smooth, the medium cage cut down chain slap, and easy to run cable. The pulley thing sucks though.

Strengths: Really easy set up. Set the high and low with the chain on and before hooking up the cable. Snug up the direct feed cable and then fine tune during the ride with the barrel adjusters on the shifters. This will NOT work with a Shimano shifter and necessitated getting SRAM X-9 shifters. Luckily for me, Pricepoint had a deal on both derailleur and shifters. The X-9 shifter works well with the Shimano front derailleur. Appears robust enough, certainly an upgrade from my4 year old Shimano. Shifts well under load with no feeling of skip or slip. Appears to wrap almost two full links more on the rear cassette than the Shimano shifter.

Weaknesses: Have not encountered one yet... even the price was good.

Bottom Line:

I wanted it partly because of the bling and because my LBS said my old derailleur was getting sloppy I justified the purchase. But I really like it. This weekend at Big Bear it worked well on the few uphills but more importantly there was much less chain slap and never came off on big hits. More miles might change my review, but somehow I think not.

I just swapped out my 2011 x.9 10 sp long cage der for the exact same model with med cage. I also installed a new cable. I have set the B screw so it has 6mm clearance at the largest gear. I have also set the hi and lo limiters. Cable tension is good.
The problem is that the shifter shifts pe ... Read More »

Hi everyone
Just built up a winter beater with a 1 x 9 drivetrain. When I shift into the top rear 34t cog, the chain drops off the front ring(32t). It drops to the inside to where the granny would normally be.
Everything seems fine otherwise.
Front ring is a ramped 9 speed ring. Not usin ... Read More »